Moins qu'un chien - Autobiography

To be less than a dog is, says Charles Mingus throughout his autobiography, to be black and a jazz musician in a white America that leaves the indifference or contempt of the black community only to plunder its cultural values. In the face of rejection, vexation and dispossession, you quickly realize that if you don't accept the dominant aesthetic codes, if you are the bearer of a world as new and uncompromising as Mingus's work, you will never be able to make a decent living from your music, and that you will have to find every means of survival - even the exploitation of others - to enable it to be heard. To be less than a dog is, at the same time as fighting against white power through the demands of creation, to be forced, in everyday life, to play its game. Charles Mingus: "My music is alive, it speaks of life and death, of good and evil. It is anger. It is real because it knows how to be anger. "And writer James Baldwin: "To be black in America is to be angry every day. " When Mingus' rage is expressed in words, the result is the corrosive fresco that is Moins qu'un chien, often cynical, merciless to oneself, but above all to those who oppress, copy or compromise. These are pages where there's no room for half-tone, imbued with the same "exaggeration" as the bassist's compositions - humorous and sarcastic, but tender and melodic too. Full of passion, desire and violence, crying out that the transformation of the world begins with the brutal affirmation of individuality and the immoderate trial of love.

Second hand book in good condition (language : French)

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